Using software tools currently available, it is often very difficult to monitor and track application usage in a standard and automated way. Furthermore, computer network and application security requirements may constrain the development of a tool that enables application utilization to be efficiently tracked.
Monitoring and tracking of application usage may be particularly desirable due to globalization. Globalization and the proliferation of information technology enable tasks that were once performed locally within an organization to be performed in other locations and possibly by other organizations. It is often desirable for an organization to have tasks performed in an area where labor is more cost-effective and/or to take advantage of the expertise and/or specialization of another organization. It may also be useful for an organization to focus on its core business and outsource tasks unrelated to its core business to other organizations.
Outsourcing, particularly Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), may be understood to describe a situation where a client organization imposes a specific set of tasks upon a third party or entity. The third party or entity may be a separate or an auxiliary organization. The third party may be located in another country or in a location near the client organization. One example of Business Process Outsourcing is a third party organization providing information technology (IT) services for an automobile and/or a machine tools manufacturer. These IT services might range from supply chain management to the control of manufacturing processes. Some of these IT services might be performed in one country whereas other IT services may be performed in a different country.
An outsourcing environment, particularly a BPO environment, may be understood to include objects, processes and circumstances defining how the third party performs tasks for the client organization. The elaboration of a BPO environment may include information system configuration requirements, access control requirements or restrictions imposed for the sake of security. The objects in the BPO environment may include equipment, such as computers with a specific software and/or hardware configuration. It may be desirable for a client organization to partially define a BPO environment for the third party in order to mitigate risk and maintain accountability within the client organization. Thus, the third party may be required to operate under restrictions outside its control.
One or more technical restrictions may be imposed on users, user computers and/or server computers in an outsourcing environment. It may be desirable to constrain the communications of computers in an outsourcing environment to one Local Area Network (LAN), or to limit the communications of a computer in an outsourcing environment to an explicitly identified set of computers. Network connectivity in an outsourcing environment may be limited to users and computers directed to perform a specific set of tasks. It may also be desirable to restrict user access to computers and/or to restrict the interactions allowed between computers.
Prior art solutions for monitoring and tracking application usage may be tailored to specific applications and processes. In other words, each application may require a separate monitoring and tracking solution integrated into the source code of the application. Also, prior art solutions may capture transactional data of monitored applications. Accordingly, a prior art solution may be a front-end for a suite of applications or for each application. The front-end may interface with the code of the application in order to determine how the application is being used. Thus, prior art solutions may require a separate monitoring and tracking tool to be written for each application, may also require access to the source code of the application, and may interact with the application programming interface (API) of each application. In other words, prior art solutions may require a dedicated tracking tool for each application. Such solutions may necessitate extensive program development efforts and may violate security standards by requiring access to application source code; thus, it is often impossible to technically implement the monitoring and tracking solution.